The Old Man and the Sea - Irony

When you first think of The Old Man and the Sea quite a few things may come to your mind. I would be willing to bet money that one of the things that you think of most likely would not be that it is an a very ironic book. Sure on the surface it is very easy to take very thing at face value. You really really really have to try in order to pick up on a few of the subtle ironies inside this book. The biggest and most glaring one is obviously the fact that even after spending so much time fighting the fish so that he could sell it. After all his work and effort, everything that Santiago had been fighting for for three whole days. Even after all that his catch of a lifetime gets eaten by sharks on the way to the shore. This is the epitome of irony. Something you work and work for, believing that once you have this thing everything will be better. All of your hard work will be worth it as soon as you have this one simple thing. Then you finally get your treasured item and you realize it is pretty cool but just ok. Finally you realize all of your hard work, all of your sweat and toil was for nothing. As you do not even like the new item much less love it the way you seemed to think you would while you were working for the object. That is exactly what happened to Santiago, he worked and worked and worked so that he could catch this thing he just knew would make everything better. Then he finally catches the fish and what happens? It gets eaten on the way to the shore. So that everything he did was for nothing. He is even worse off than he was before he hooked the giant fish. Now he is hungry, fish less and sleepy. Oh the humanity Oh the Irony!